A/N: Okay, I apologize for this chapter, both for taking so long to finish it and get it up and also for... its existence. I had wanted this to be the last chapter but it quickly became clear that it would've been way too long, so I split it. Next chapter should definitely be the last chapter unless I really do decide to include an epilogue. Anyway, I hope this chapter is still enjoyable.
Zim gained and lost the upper hand in under two minutes, with everything falling apart almost immediately after Dib left.
The room he had entered was dimly lit. Of course, that didn't really matter to him, since the amazing technology implanted in his eyes allowed him to see almost as well in the dark as he could in bright sunlight. The small group of dark-clothed adult humans he'd forced to huddle together in a corner behind the table were muttering among themselves and staring at him.
These were the ones. Their silhouettes were the same as what he remembered. He could see them in his mind's eye—crashing through the wall of his house, knocking him out, running off with GIR…
Heeeeeey, waitaminute. How had he known they'd taken GIR if he was unconscious at the time? Eh, weird. And wait, there hadn't been a giant gaping hole in the wall of his base when he'd left to search for GIR! Maybe the computer had fixed it? But then he must have lied about not knowing what was going on. What was going on?
Head spinning, he advanced toward the dark-clothed agents of the Swollen Meatball Network or whatever it was called, hands curled tightly by his sides and lips drawn back over his teeth. Whatever was going on, they were behind it. Right? Right.
Something small, hard, and heavy flew at him and smacked him in the center of his forehead. His vision snapped to black for a second.
"AUGH!" He recoiled, scrambling backwards and clenching his hands to his head. "Who did that? Who threw that thing?!"
"And that is the purpose of the salt canister!" the agent who'd thrown it cheered. Zim hissed through his teeth, pulling his hands away and blinking the stars out of his eyes. He whipped his head around to glare at them all.
"Good work, Agent Chupa!" one old human, who looked to be the Tallest—eh, the leader—of the group, said. "Agent Skyfish, Agent Cabra, disable those metallic appendages on its back!"
Two of the shadowy agents in the back jumped forward and drew gun-like objects. They fired at Zim's PAK legs and bindings flew out instead of bullets, twisting around the appendages and tying them together in pairs. Zim lost his balance and stumbled, toppling to the ground and landing on his knees. The two agents that had incapacitated him grabbed his arms and hauled him to his feet despite his screams of protest, dragging him toward the others. Mind going blank in a blind panic, he craned his neck down, sinking his teeth into one of the arms holding him.
His eyes flew wide open. Ugh! Human skin! Filthy human skin! In his mouth!
He spat it out but the pain he'd caused the agent was enough to make him let go. Zim twisted around and yanked his left arm out of the other human's grip. He vaulted over the table, using his bound PAK legs as best he could to flip it over so it was laying on its side and shoved it forward, slamming it into the enemy agents.
"What did you do with my robot?" he asked for the final time. Spittle flew from his mouth and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.
"We didn't take any robot of yours," one of the humans replied.
"LIAR!" Zim gripped the edge of the table and leaned over it. "You did! I saw you!"
At that moment, there was a long, low bloop followed by the scratchy sound of microphone interference, causing everyone in the room to look up.
"Someone's messing with the PA system in my office!" the old man realized.
"Hey there!" a voice said over the intercom. Zim recognized it as what Dib had sounded like for the past couple of hours. Strangely, now that the voice was disembodied, he noticed that it didn't actually sound exactly like Dib. Eh? "I have to say, your little capture earlier actually did catch me by surprise! You should be proud! Hah, good luck trying it again, though! Oh, and hey, Darkbootie, thanks for leaving things like a knife and a lighter just laying out right on your desk! Handy! Well, I'll be on my way now! This is Dib What's-His-Name signing off!"
"Forget the alien—that demon is our number one priority," the head agent said. "We have to stop him before he gets any farther or we'll all be in grave danger."
Zim stared as every agent shoved right past him and ran out the exit he'd created earlier. Breathing hard, he watched them disappear around a corner and drew himself up. "Yes! Run from ZIM!"
At least their attention was off him for now. He retracted his tied PAK legs as best he could and darted out into the hall, doing a quick turnaround to get his bearings before running into the nearest stairwell. He bounded up a couple of flights of stairs and pushed his way outside again, emerging out in an empty hallway.
It was quieter up here. Zim slipped along the edge of the hall, struggling to get his breathing under control and eyeing the other way suspiciously. It was hard to determine where to go when the walls threatened to close in on him with every passing second. They curved and loomed over him like he was looking at the world through a fisheye lens. He rubbed at his eyes and wiped away the beads of sweat trickling down his clammy forehead, running his tongue over dry lips and swallowing hard. There was no end to this place! Every way he turned there was just another hallway lined with doors, behind which could be lurking shadowy figures—humans who wanted nothing more than to strap him to an autopsy table and slice his belly meats open!
Also, he'd been all over this place and there was no sign of GIR.
"It doesn't matter," Zim said to himself, clenching and unclenching the fingers of one hand. "Perhaps I should go back home and regroup. It'll take forever to find GIR if I keep wandering around aimlessly!" He rubbed his arms. Home was sounding really good right now. Zim growled. "But who knows what they could be doing to GIR this very instant? I must find him!"
He crept down the hallway. Two agents hurried by and he flung his back against the wall, stalling his breathing until they passed. They didn't so much as glance at him but he waited until they turned the corner to peel himself away from the wall and back off, rubbing his hands together and breathing hard. This entire place was out to get him!
Did he still have his wig on, at least? He patted his head. Yes, it was still there. Zim forced himself to relax a bit and uncoil from his tense stance. His disguise would offer protection against these people. He couldn't let his own fears cost him the mission…
Where was Dib? He'd broken the filthy human out of that room and then Dib had run off. Not that Zim needed his help, of course. The very thought nauseated him and gave his squeedily-spooch a sick, twisted feeling. He'd have to find GIR on his own, just like he'd planned from the beginning.
A metal door on the other side of the hall caught his eye. Zim crossed the floor and pulled at the handle. It didn't open. Next to the door on the wall was the familiar hand-scanner that appeared everywhere in this place. Oddly, though, this door also had a retinal scanner. Tacked up next to the doorframe was a sign reading "TOP SECRET. ENTRANCE TO SENIOR MEMBERS ONLY."
Top secret? And even more limited access than usual, eh? It was probably full of top secret stuff! Zim sniffed at the air, but didn't detect anything strange. There certainly wasn't anything living behind that door. What could it be hiding?
He tapped at the door and leaned closer. "GIR?" There was no answer so he knocked harder. "GIR! Are you in there?" Still nothing. Maybe he was just ignoring Zim. Or maybe these people had deactivated his vocal synthesizers somehow. Or maybe he was already—NO. Zim growled in the back of his throat and yanked at the door again. Or maybe GIR wasn't even in that room and Zim was wasting time over nothing! He reached over his shoulder and rooted around in his PAK. His fingers brushed up against the radio on a mechanical arm and he paused. Could he call GIR? No, no, that would bring too much attention to himself!
Would… would it really? He made a little whining noise, screwing up his eyes and pushing the radio away with his fingertips. For some reason he was feeling a strong aversion to using the radio. Maybe something was terribly wrong with it and he was… subconsciously… keeping himself from touching it? Ech, whatever, he'd just have to check it over once this whole thing was dealt with. Zim found the scanner in his PAK and gripped it, pulling it out and holding it up to the door. It beeped a little but showed no sign of anything significant being inside. He drooped a little. Better keep looking for GIR somewhere else—WAIT! The scanner glowed green and the beeping intensified. Zim's eyes widened and he backed away from the door. "That's an Irken signal! There's Irken technology in that room!"
Zim flung himself at the door, yanking at the handle and scrabbling at the edges. It didn't budge. "Curse these Swollen Meatballs and their DNA scanners! GIR! Can you hear me?"
When there was still no response, he expanded out his PAK legs and fired high-powered energy beams at the door handle and hinges. It took five tries before they splintered apart; tiny bits of metal flew at him and scored across his skin. The worst of it hit his arms due to the fact that he was using them to shield his face. Good thing Invader uniforms were made of such tough material.
The door fell toward him and he scrambled away, letting it crash to the ground. He peered inside the room. It was poorly lit, but that didn't bother him. He could see well in the dark. And the thing that immediately presented itself was the complete absence of GIR. Instead, there was a bunch of reddish rubble from some kind of machine laid out on a table in the center of the room. Zim padded into the room and picked up one of the pieces, weighing it in his hand and examining it. The color and shape looked kinda familiar. Huh…
Wait a second… Zim dropped the piece like it had burned him, picking up his scanner and doing another scan at close range. The readings confirmed what he'd thought. This was no ordinary human metal. These were remnants of the Megadoomer he'd blown up! What—HOW—
No human should have access to these! What were they planning to do with them? What secrets had they already uncovered? This was the exact reason he'd blown the thing up! (He still sort of regretted that. Dib hadn't even managed to take any actual pictures of it—what a waste of a perfectly good Megadoomer.)
"I should destroy these," he said to himself. Immediately he scraped together all the parts on the table into a pile, then darted around the room and collected every single other thing that looked like an object humans shouldn't have. His innards twisted at the realization that a lot of his own supplies were stored in this room. Not just the Megadoomer, but various other pieces of Irken machinery that had broken. There were a few things made by other alien races in here as well, not to mention a bunch of paranormal junk. In one corner was a wardrobe-type thing—opening it, he found some kind of weird-looking gun that he'd never seen before and didn't appear Irken-made at all. Still, it was hidden in this room, and therefore it needed to die. Around it were a few tube things that looked like they might contain messages of some sort. He tossed all of those into the growing pile until he had it all collected on top of the table.
But how could he get rid of it all? Hadn't the Dib been trying to burn things with matches? Maybe Zim could go find the matches he'd thrown on the ground. Burning these things would be a good head start before the whole building blew up. If Dib hadn't been lying about setting off the self-destruct sequence, of course.
When Dib reached the deceivingly simple-looking building that housed TSEN headquarters, he automatically flew down and tried to press his palm to the hand scanner by the door. His hand passed right through it.
"Oh. Right." He pulled it back and chewed on his lip. Was there any other way in besides the doors? No, he couldn't recall any. And this time there was no one around to open the doors for him. "I mean, I could just go right through them," he said aloud. "But then I'd have to leave this dumb toy behind and… yeah."
Maybe there'd be a Voodoo doll or something laying around inside that he could use. Either way, he couldn't just wait out here for someone to come along and open the door. He had to find his fellow Eyeball agents and figure out a way out of this mess as soon as possible.
He dropped the doll on the ground and phased through the metal door into the hall beyond. It was deserted. Huh… that was kind of unusual for this time of day.
"Agent Darkbootie?" he called, moving forward and glancing around. "Agent Tunaghost? …Agent Nessie? Where is everyone?"
He drifted into the hall lined with elevators and passed through one of the pairs of double doors, shooting all the way down the elevator shaft until he emerged out in the lobby many floors underground. Immediately he caught sight of a number of agents clustered around the front desk at the other end of the room.
"Hey! I need help!" Dib flew over to them, but none looked up. Of course, without the doll, no one could hear him. "What's going on, anyway?"
He finally noticed what the gathering was about. The receptionist who was always at the desk had her head resting on it, her shoulders rising up and down as she emitted loud, obnoxious snores. She was fast asleep. Her hair hung from her head in limp, wet strands and there was a puddle of water surrounding her face on the wooden desk.
"Nothing I've tried works!" one of the agents wailed, throwing an empty cup that sailed right through Dib's hair scythe. "Pouring water on her didn't work, loud noises didn't work, what happened to her?"
The agent standing next to that guy nudged him in the ribs and leaned closer. "Last I heard, Darkbootie thought it had something to do with demonic possession. I mean, did you hear that guy talking over the PA? Maybe that was him! Maybe she had a run-in with him! We haven't had a case like this in years…"
"Possession?" Dib repeated. His gaze traveled from the sleeping receptionist to the agents and back again. Sleeping so deeply that she couldn't be woken up… and Bill Cipher was a dream demon…
Dib turned and raced back to the elevators. Bill was somewhere in this building! And he was attacking people! Or putting them under enchantments, anyway. Oh, man. Dib was going to find that overgrown nacho chip and give him a piece of his mind.
His heart skipped a beat at his own words, recalling that Bill probably had the power to actually take a piece of his mind. He shoved that thought away.
The floor above the lobby, when he checked it, was bustling with agents running to and fro from Agent Darkbootie's office at the end of the hall. They sounded like they were trying to split up into search parties. It didn't take three guesses to try to figure out who or what they might be searching for.
He tried the floor above that. It was empty and silent, though he had no idea how much he might have been missing since he only did a quick fly around to look for his body.
He reached the next floor, the seventh (since the floors extended underground as basement levels rather than upwards, they were numbered backwards) and was about to start another search when—
"Looking for someone?"
Dib whirled around, choking back a cry of alarm. "Bill!" He recoiled.
The small figure that emerged from the shadows of a doorway looked even worse than he had hours ago, when Bill had cheerfully driven off in a stolen car and left Dib behind. At least then he'd just had a bloody nose and watery eyes from eating jalapeños slathered in maple syrup. Now he was dirty, his hair was a mess, his wrists looked raw and chafed like he'd been bound with rope, and he had evidently made no attempt to clean the dried blood off his nose.
"Took you long enough to get here!" the demon said, grinning and walking toward Dib with his hands in his pockets. "I was beginning to think you'd never figure it out!"
"Figure it out…?" Dib stared at him blankly. Then, suddenly, it hit him. "You never wanted to take down an evil organization! The organization you wanted to destroy was the Swollen Eyeballs all along, wasn't it?"
"Ding ding ding!" Bill laughed. "Honestly, I thought it was stupidly obvious! I mean I left you enough hints, didn't I? And you still didn't catch on until just now! Hahaha!" He wiped at his eye. "Anyway, fun's fun, but now I need to get back to business. Hey, since you've decided to show up, I guess this means you get to watch!"
"It won't work!" Dib flew down in front of him, jabbing at him with his ghostly finger. "The Eyeballs are the most knowledgeable paranormal experts in the world! They know possession when they see it, and they won't let you get away until you get out of my body!"
"Won't let me get away? Haha, kid, guess what already happened!" Bill indicated his raw wrists. "Looks like I got away just fine! That Darkbootie guy ties a mean knot, but hey, even the best knots can't hold up against one of these babies!" He reached into his pocket, drew out a switchblade, and tossed it in the air with the blade flashing before catching it by the handle and stowing it away again. Dib pulled at the skin under his eyes with his fingertips. Where had Bill found a knife? Just—where? Why was this even happening?
"Anyway, I'm almost done here! Tag along if you want!" Bill walked past him and started down the hall.
Dib flew after him, his hands shaking. "So all this time you were just using me to get to the Eyeballs?"
"You got that right, Frowny-Face!"
Dib squeezed his eyes closed, pinching the bridge of his nose behind his glasses. "And you never really cared about helping me expose Zim at all, did you! Man…"
"Of course not! Excellent detective skills!"
He huddled his arms around his chest, gripping his shoulders and suddenly feeling very, very cold. Bill was going to use his body to destroy the one real connection Dib had with other people who believed in the same things he did, and there was nothing he could do about it.
"Why are you even doing this?" he demanded, unfolding his arms. "What do you have to gain by destroying this place?"
"You didn't guess by what was in the clock I had you steal?" Bill smiled.
"I didn't steal it! I was going to leave money."
"Nah, you totally stole it! Hahaha! But seriously, all I want to do is get rid of some of the information they've got here, collect something from a room your friend kindly opened up for me, and then blow the place up!"
"Blow it up?" Dib cried. "What's the matter with you? You threw yourself down the stairs and stuffed hot peppers in your mouth, started fires in my room, and nearly killed me by crashing a car into a telephone pole! Now you're going to blow up this whole building?"
"That's the plan!"
"But—but—" Dib, struggling to think of a coherent argument against this development, looked the demon up and down and raised an eyebrow. "What—hey, wait, how are you even still standing? You're hurt all over and I was up all night last night trying to escape zombies in the mall!"
Bill looked back at Dib with a smile. "Oh, that's easy! The human body's actually pretty durable! Watch!" He made a fist, drew back his arm, and punched the wall hard enough to dent it. Dib gasped. Bill wrung his hand, flexing the fingers. The knuckles had started bleeding. "Haha. See? My hand didn't even get crushed! That reminds me, I've been wanting to see what it would take to actually crush a human hand! Want to find out?"
"No!" Dib said. What had he done to deserve this?! Was Bill actually this insane and masochistic or was the demon just messing with him in a really nasty way?
"Yeah, I might try that later. All right, back on track!" Bill walked straight to a room that was missing its door with a sickened Dib following closely behind. Dib had to do a double take at the sight of the room, noticing that the door had actually fallen forward and was lying flat on the ground.
"This is the top secret room that no one's allowed into!" Dib said. "Wait, who did you say did this?"
"That weird alien kid in the pink dress. You know, the one you summoned me to mess with in the first place?" Bill laughed. "He's pretty amusing! And so predictable it's almost stupid!"
"Zim's here?!"
"Yep! Did I forget to mention that?" Bill headed into the room, where there was a table piled with all sorts of junk. Dib hovered over the pile, staring at it, while Bill disappeared into the back of the room for a moment. There was Irken equipment here. A room full of broken Irken equipment?
TSEN had collected a room full of pieces of Irken equipment and no one had once thought to mention it to him? Who had spent months studying Irkens? Who was the foremost expert on Irkens here? Dib fumed. When he finally managed to get his body back from this thieving triangle demon, he would go confront Agent Darkbootie about this.
Bill arrived back next to him. He'd picked up a cloth satchel somewhere and reached out to the pile, picking up some weird tube things lying there and stuffing them in the bag.
"Did you know that this organization came up with the idea for a memory-wiping gun first?" he said in response to Dib's questioning look. "They were working on it decades ago and had a guy helping them out! Took some of his important memories as tests, too! And later he went on to write journals about paranormal happenings and told his research assistant all about the memory gun!" Bill snickered. "Man, if you were Pine Tree, you would be all over that information. Good thing it's completely irrelevant to you! Anyway, I'm saving these!" He closed up the satchel with the tubes inside.
All that only gave Dib more questions but the demon didn't offer any further explanation, instead walking around the room to make sure that everything was piled up. "Wow, look at all this other stuff! You people aren't playing around! Does anyone here even have a job?"
"This is a job!" Dib said, frowning. "And yeah, plenty of people here have other jobs!"
"What, you mean like being janitors?" Bill pulled a lighter out of the opposite pocket from where he'd put the knife and waved it at Dib. "Look what else I found lying around! Nifty, huh? You'd think paranormal 'experts' like these bozos would lock up knives and lighters to keep them out of supernatural hands! Oh well!" He clicked on the lighter and held the flame to an object at the bottom of the pile. The little fire was bright white and caught quickly, even though Dib was pretty sure metal shouldn't really be able to catch fire like that. "Light 'em up!"
"What? Stop!" Dib rushed at the lighter and tried to beat out the fire. Just like with what happened in his room, however, he could do nothing, and he ended up pulling away with his eyes stinging.
The tiny flame licked at the rubble, then flared up and ate more hungrily at it, spreading over the table. It burned so searing hot that Dib could almost feel it. What kind of fire was this? There was something supernatural about it, that was for sure. He could only watch, biting his lip, as paranormal and alien evidence went up in flame. This just wasn't fair.
"You're crazy!" he said at last to Bill.
"Hah! That's always a laugh, coming from a human!" Bill turned to look at the ceiling, locking eyes on a single sprinkler mounted there, and weighed the lighter in his hand before pitching forward and throwing it just as a shrill beeping noise started up. The lighter hit the sprinkler and snapped the end right off. Both items dropping to the floor; water started pouring from the broken sprinkler system in a steady stream down to the ground but none of it hit the pile of burning artifacts. "Well, I'm outta here!"
Bill picked up the lighter again, wiped it dry on his jacket, and ducked back out of the room. Dib lingered for a moment to watch the burning pile with an empty, hollowed-out feeling. Then he passed through the door after Bill.
"There he is!" someone exclaimed. Dib and Bill looked down the hall to see two agents (Dib couldn't identify them at this distance) running toward them.
"Oh-ho, this is getting interesting!" Bill laughed. He turned tail and fled in the opposite direction with his coattails flying, swinging around a corner and disappearing from view.
"Nice job shouting at him, genius," one of the agents berated the other as they chased after him. Dib took off in pursuit and caught up with Bill far ahead of the agents. The demon had skidded to a halt in the hall of elevators and had wedged his fingers in the crack between one of the sets of doors, trying to force them open.
"What are you doing now?" Dib rushed forward.
"Elevator's not working in this one!" Bill laughed. "I'd like to see them try to follow me!"
"Follow you? What—WHAT?"
The agents rounded the corner and charged after him. Bill pried the doors open to reveal a dark, yawning gap, and twisted around to give the pursuers a demented wave. "Try and catch me, suckers!"
He leapt forward into the abyss and the doors crashed closed behind him.
"Whoa! Whoa!" The two agents skidded to a halt in front of the elevators and backtracked. "What now?"
Dib's mind had gone blank. Heart in his throat, he phased through the doors and found… Bill, clinging to a handhold a couple of feet down on the opposite wall of the shaft.
"Oh my gosh." The words just slipped out. Dib deflated and hung limp in the air for a moment. "You pretty much just gave me a heart attack."
"Well, you'll be happy to know that that's physically impossible in your state!" the demon said.
Fury welled up in Dib's chest and he had to resist the urge to punch Bill in his smug face. Not only would it be useless, but he'd be attacking himself. "Stairs!" he yelled, gesticulating wildly. "There were stairs right outside! Why didn't you just use the stairs?! You nearly killed me—again! Besides, those two agents could just open up the doors and follow you down, you know."
"Nah, both of them are terrified of heights." Bill's feet scrabbled at the wall until they found purchase and held firm. He reached up, found another handhold, and began to scale the wall more quickly than Dib would ever have thought. Maybe he was using spooky demon wall-climbing powers or something.
Also how did Bill know that those two were afraid of heights? Oh, never mind.
"Well, great." Dib floated up after him. "How are you even going to get out of here? You're not gonna climb up higher and then just jump down, are you?"
Bill gave him a smirk. "Look, Bighead, if I planned on falling I would've fallen already."
"Don't call me 'Bighead.'"
"Sure, fine. Whoops!" Bill's foot slipped and he was left dangling by his fingertips. Dib yelped and dove down, frantically trying to think of a way that he could catch his body before the demon made him plummet to his death. However, Bill just laughed and easily regained his footing, grinning down at Dib under his arm. "Gotcha! Geez, kid, you're like the jumpiest freak I've seen in ages! You need to loosen up! No wonder your sister hates you!"
Dib backed away a little, stung. "Gaz doesn't hate me."
"Really? You sure about that? I don't see her clamoring to come up here and help you out of the sticky situation you've gotten yourself into!" The demon chuckled. "She's just standing down in the lobby not doing anything!"
Dib gave a start. "Gaz is in the lobby? How'd she even get in here? How did Zim get in here?"
"I dunno, but hey, how fast do you think that fire on the seventh floor will spread? Too bad there's no escape from the lobby except right up into the flames!"
There was no hesitation. Dib flipped over and dove back down the elevator shaft, heading right to the lobby once more.
Zim was pretty sure that the floor where he'd dropped the matches was the one nearly at the top, right below the ground level. He took the stairs all the way up and by the time he arrived decided that he never wanted to see another step again. This floor looked the same as all the others but it only took a quick search to find the room that Dib had wanted him to burn things in. Matches were scattered on the floor. He scrabbled around on the ground, gathering them all up and tucking them into the pockets of his uniform. He also found the box, pushing that into his pocket too.
When he had collected them all he climbed back to his feet and ran for the door to the stairwell, skipping down the stairs until he felt sure he had arrived back at the floor with the secret room. He left the stairwell and turned a couple of corners. At the last one, a wave of heat hit him like he was standing too close behind a spaceship that was taking off.
The entire hall in front of him was aflame in glowing white fire.
It was too hot, and it was spreading too quickly, dancing toward him a couple more feet as he watched wide-eyed. He stumbled backwards with a shriek, spinning around and pelting back toward the stairs.
…Wait, where were the stairs?!
Why was everything going wrong?